Sunday 14 November 2010 14.17 EST
First published on Sunday 14 November 2010 14.17 EST

Books to the ceiling, Books to the sky,My pile of books is a mile high.How I love them! How I need them!I'll have a long beard by the time I read them.

~ Arnold Lobel [1933-1987] author of many popular children's books.

Compiled by Ian "Birdbooker" Paulsen, the Birdbooker Report is a long-running weekly report listing the wide variety of nature, natural history, ecology, animal behaviour, science and history books that have been newly released or republished in North America and in the UK. The books listed here were received by Ian during the previous week, courtesy of these various publishing houses.

Featured Title:

Porter, Richard and Simon Aspinall. Birds of the Middle East (second edition). 2010. Princeton University Press/Helm. Paperback: 384 pages. Price: $39.50 U.S. [Amazon UK; Amazon US]. SUMMARY: Birds of the Middle East is now the most field-ready and comprehensive guide to the fantastic birds of this region. This fully revised and updated second edition covers all species -- including vagrants -- found in the Arabian Peninsula (including Socotra), Jordan, Lebanon, Israel, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Turkey, and Cyprus. It features 176 superb color plates depicting more than 800 species, as well as 820 color distribution maps that show the breeding range for almost every species. In this upgraded edition, maps and detailed species accounts are now located opposite the plates, making this stunningly illustrated field guide easier to use than ever. * The most comprehensive field guide to the birds of the Middle East * Covers more than 800 species -- including 100 not covered in the first edition * Features 176 color plates depicting all species * Includes detailed species accounts and 820 color distribution maps * Text and maps now located opposite the color plates.IAN'S RECOMMENDATION: Anyone interested in the birds of the Middle East will want this book!

New and Recent Titles:

Beccaloni, George. Biggest Bugs (life-size!). 2010. Firefly Books. Hardbound: 84 pages. Price: $19.95 U.S. [Amazon UK; Amazon US]. SUMMARY: Biggest Bugs Life-size is a veritable jump-off-the-page spectacle for bug enthusiasts. It is the first book to include color photographs of 38 of the world's biggest, heaviest, longest and mightiest bugs reproduced at their actual size. Concise text gives all of the essential facts, including the bug's size, what it eats and who discovered it. Maps show where the bugs live.

The book's dramatic gatefold shows the world's longest bug -- at 22-inches, the Chan's megastick is almost as long as an adult's arm. There is also the gargantuan cockroach, with the longest wingspan in the world, and the potentially pesky gigantea beefly, which is as big as a human eyeball. Even the names are big: giant hawker dragonfly, colossus earwig, giant tarantula hawk wasp, goliath bird-eating spider, Amazonian giant centipede, titan longhorn beetle. Biggest Bugs Life-size shows the bugs as they are in real life, in brilliant color and in enormous photographs that readers won't soon forget. IAN'S RECOMMENDATION: For ages 9-12.

Phillips, Roger. Mushrooms and other Fungi of North America. 2010. Firefly Books. Paperback: 384 pages. Price: $29.95 U.S. [Amazon UK; Amazon US]. SUMMARY: For amateur collectors or professional mycologists working in the field, this guidebook is quite simply the best North American mushroom reference ever published. Each of the 1,000 specimens is shown in full color on a neutral background to eliminate distractions, and specimens are arranged to show the cap, stem, gills, spines and a cross section, usually in various stages of growth.

Roger Phillips identifies all regional varieties of Basidiomycetes, which include chanterelles, puffballs and fungi, and Ascomycetes, which include morels and cup fungi. Detailed descriptive information on each mushroom variety includes: * Dimensions of cap, gills and stem * Color and texture of flesh * Odor and taste * Habitat and growing season * Distribution and appearance of spores * Edibility and poison warnings There is also helpful advice on collecting specimens plus an illustrated beginner identification key and a generic key for the more advanced collector. Mushrooms and Other Fungi of North America is at once the ideal introduction to mycology and an essential reference for the experienced collector -- the definitive book in its category. IAN'S RECOMMENDATION: A very useful guide to the fungi of North America.

Benson, Etienne. Wired Wilderness: Technologies of Tracking and the Making of Modern Wildlife. 2010. Johns Hopkins University Press. Hardbound: 251 pages. Price: $55.00 U.S. [Amazon UK; Amazon US]. SUMMARY: American wildlife biologists first began fitting animals with radio transmitters in the 1950s. By the 1980s the practice had proven so useful to scientists and nonscientists alike that it became global. Wired Wilderness is the first book-length study of the origin, evolution, use, and impact of these now-commonplace tracking technologies.

Combining approaches from environmental history, the history of science and technology, animal studies, and the cultural and political history of the United States, Etienne Benson traces the radio tracking of wild animals across a wide range of institutions, regions, and species and in a variety of contexts. He explains how hunters, animal-rights activists, and other conservation-minded groups gradually turned tagging from a tool for control into a conduit for connection with wildlife. Drawing on extensive archival research, interviews with wildlife biologists and engineers, and in-depth case studies of specific conservation issues -- such as the management of deer, grouse, and other game animals in the upper Midwest and the conservation of tigers and rhinoceroses in Nepal -- Benson illuminates telemetry's context-dependent uses and meanings as well as commonalities among tagging practices. Wired Wilderness traces the evolution of the modern wildlife biologist's field practices and shows how the intense interest of non-scientists at once constrained and benefited the field. Scholars of and researchers involved in wildlife management will find this history both fascinating and revealing. IAN'S RECOMMENDATION: For those with an interest in the history of wildlife biology.

You can read the early Birdbooker Reports in the archives on my former ScienceBlogs site, and Ian now has his own website, The Birdbooker Report, where you can read his synopses about newly published science, nature and animal books.